Kate Talbot

A Bay Area native, Kate received her B.A. in Communications from University of California, San Diego and most recently her MBA from University of San Francisco. She focused her MBA curriculum on Social Entrepreneurship and interned at Social Capital Markets and consulted for Hub Bay Area and Centro Community Partners. Prior to obtaining her MBA, she worked in media and public relations in San Francisco and Manhattan. Her passion for international development stems from spending a significant amount of time volunteering at the Meher Public Trust in the rural village of Ahmednagar, India. In her free time, Kate loves to take dance classes, hike in Marin, and spend time laughing with family and friends.

Kiva Blog Updates

This incredibly vibrant organization is building bright futures for women in Africa with solar technology. Utilizing a business model similar to the Avon-style sales network, Solar Sister empowers women entrepreneurs, giving them the tools they need to sell solar lights, mobile phone chargers and other products in remote and low-income areas.

In sub-Saharan Africa, women make up 70% of the people living without electricity and are also the primary decision makers when it comes to... Continue Reading >>

Founded in 1994, ACCION San Diego is an affiliate of the international leader in micro-enterprise development ACCION International and is an integral force in Southern California’s micro-enterprise landscape.

ACCION San Diego provides small business loans and support systems to low-to-moderate income entrepreneurs who are unable to obtain traditional sources of credit. In the last 20 years, the organization has lent over $17 million to more than 1...

This is a guest post by Kiva lender Christeil Figueroa Gota, a mother of four boys in California who practices "unschooling," a home teaching method that emphasizes learning through natural life experiences -- including Kiva.

Three of Christeil's sons playing in the waves.

People are always talking about bringing education to life, literally, by living their lives and letting their children learn the ins and outs of living in our modern world. Home educators and unschoolers are experts at this.

Kiva is all about connecting lenders and borrowers to alleviate poverty. But a lot of other people work to make these connections possible.

Some of the major unsung heroes are our Kiva Coordinators. Called KCs, these extraordinary individuals are the point people at our Field Partners who work with loan officers to gather photos and stories to post on Kiva for the global community to support.

We couldn't be more grateful for all the extra-mile work KCs do to fuel Kiva's mission. So we'd like to take a moment to thank some of the super stars who have really gone... Continue Reading >>

Those familiar with microfinance know the Grameen Foundation as one of the most prominent nonprofits helping the world's poorest people escape poverty. But what many people may not know is that Grameen Foundation, through its AppLab initiative, has spent more than a decade successfully exploring ways to use mobile phones to improve people's lives through information sharing.

Grameen Foundation has long believed that barriers to information about...

This month's Passport Series opened our eyes to the over 700,000 internally displaced people living in Azerbaijan -- the most per capita than any other country in the world. This is the legacy of the Nagorno-Karabakh War, which forced thousands to flee their homes due to violence and ethnic strife almost 20 years ago.

With such a large portion of the country's population living in poverty with limited resources, we wanted to take a closer look at what it means to be internally displaced.

We want to say a big THANKS to the Kiva community for helping us celebrate our 7th birthday this week! We were blown away by the amount of money lent in our first ever Loan-a-thon -- and it's still going until 11:59 p.m. PST tonight!

To show our gratitude, we recorded this special message for our lenders during our birthday party at Kiva headquarters last night:

On the surface, Azerbaijan is an oil rich nation -- home to soaring skyscrapers, luxurious lifestyles, and a booming nightlife. But the wealth and abundance in the capital city of Baku doesn't mirror the rest of the country. With high inflation rates and the long-term displacement of over 700,000 people by the Nagorno-Karabakh War, 11% of the population lives below the international poverty line.

The Bulvar, Baku’s seafront promenade.

Finding credit to start a business in Azerbaijan is a complicated endeavor. There are many...

If you're worried about being cold this winter, imagine living in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia -- the coldest capital city in the world -- where winter temperatures fluctuate between -15°C to -30°C.

Beyond the chill, air quality is dangerously bad during the city's coldest months. In fact, Ulaanbaatar is quickly becoming the world's most polluted city -- a dubious distinction, considering its population is only 1.2 million (vs. New York's 8.2 million).

Because most households use coal as a heat source, the air pollution is so thick that it's led to many cases of...

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Kiva connects millions of people through lending to alleviate poverty. Read about our partners, programs and loans here. Or check out stories straight from the field on the Kiva Fellows Blog. Have questions? Send them our way at blog@kiva.org.